All Too Human - Vernacular Avant-garde

Daniel Spicer, Jazzwise

Thirty-something Danish drummer Peter Bruun has worked with some real heavyweights, including Evan Parker, Tim Berne and Django Bates. Here leading his own band, and playing his own compositions, he settles into a strange transitional zone where loose harmolodic grooves that feel like they’re held together with rubber bands give way to weird synth interludes. Actually, Simon Toldam’s keyboards are a major presence throughout – on the one hand providing thick, gutworrying squelch bass and, on the other, contributing tense ambient washes that feel like a new-age colony perched on the outskirts of Twin Peaks. If some of these more ambient experiments – such as ‘All Too Human’ – feel like they’re strangely suspended in stasis, there are other more mobile moments: the title-track begins with a meditative guitar intro from Marc Ducret, slides into fierce riffage then whips itself up into a complex, Zappa-ish theme before a Lost In Space synth twinkle heralds a final hiccupping groove with B-movie organ. That Bruun has plenty of ideas, there is no doubt.